Category Archives: Australia

The air pulsates with dry heat. The sky and earth vibrate with impossible colours. You are surrounded by rusted equipment, reclaimed tyres, and expensive solar panels; it is impossible to discern what is in use and what has been abandoned. Houses are fashioned from old campers and railway carriages, or lovingly created out of mud […]

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I do love road trips! And when I’m on one, other ones I’ve taken come to mind: whether it’s because of comparisons or contrasts. I’ve just spent some time winding up and down through the magnificent mountains of Western Canada – which counter-intuitively made me think of the straight and lonely stretches of highway through […]

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Somewhere in my neighbourhood, there is a bagpiper. I hear him more often than see him: at sporadic intervals throughout the year, kitted out in full tartan he plays through a selection of tunes. When I hear him, I know it is the lead-up to one of Australia’s days of remembrance. He’s been out again […]

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Many, many years ago, I went to the cinema to see a then-new Australian film: Travelling North(1987) by prolific and much-loved playwright David Williamson. I was entranced! Not so much by the grumpy main character played by Leo McKern, or the plot, in which not much happens, but by the setting. After taking a road […]

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The Daintree National Park is just magic! The Daintree Tropical Rainforest, which the Park protects, is Australia’s largest remaining rainforest. Part of the UNESCO-listed “Wet Tropics of Queensland”, it covers over 1,200 square kilometres (463 square miles), and is home to a unique and complex ecosystem, housing many plants and animals not found anywhere else […]

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